


Making Repairs

by DesertScribe



Category: Blood Drive (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-07-25 05:44:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16191281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/pseuds/DesertScribe
Summary: Aki and Christopher survive the destruction of Heart Tower, roll back some questionable upgrade choices, try to figure out where to go next, and take another important step in their relationship.





	Making Repairs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ideare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideare/gifts).



"Sorry if you're binging this, but no more bullshit fake deaths, no more clever surprises, just good old fashioned catharsis."

And then the PA system went quiet, leaving Aki with only the barely detectible sounds of Christopher's failing body in her arms, dripping water, and the distant but rapidly approaching rumble of Heart Tower being destroyed above her. Of course Julian Slink would set up a blast pattern to cause the slowest but ultimately most destructive collapse of the building, Aki thought in the same milliseconds it took her to calculate how many seconds she had left before all accelerating mass of the upper floors crashed into the sub-basements, killing her and Christopher. She did not regret what she had done to Julian. She only regretted that she had not taken the time to do more. She also refused to allow Julian to have the final laugh, not over her and not over Christopher. Not when she still had 5.3497231 seconds to do something about it.

There was not enough time to get up to the surface, not by herself and definitely not with Christopher in tow, and once up there, the chance of being able to reach a suitable distance to avoid being caught in the exterior falling debris was infinitesimally small. However, Aki did not need to reach the surface. She only needed to reach a part of the infinitely interconnected basement structure housed in some location other than Heart Tower. There was plenty of time to do _that_.

"I love you, and I'm sorry if this hurts you," Aki whispered to the man who had upended not only her world but also the very ways in which she processed the world.

Then she picked him up and ran for their lives.

\- ♥ -

Consciousness was slow in returning to Christopher, but eventually it did.

"It's good that you're finally awake, Christopher," he heard Aki say amidst the sound of clicking buttons and beeping from somewhere behind him as his eyes fluttered open, "but you need to hold still for a while longer."

Holding still shouldn't be too much of a problem, Christopher decided muzzily, seeing as how his whole body was in the grips of a deep lethargy he was in no mood to fight just yet. Also, he appeared to be flat on his back with his arms and legs manacled in place on some kind of table. Again. He felt like he was probably naked, too. It was almost comforting after all the times Aki had done it to him before.

However, that was not enough to keep him from wondering what the hell was going on right now when the last thing he remembered was fighting with Arthur. His chest still hurt from that, but only in a distant way, like he was on really good painkillers. Meanwhile, pieces of machinery whirred around, sometimes poking him, sometimes pulling at him, sometimes hurting him but more frequently taking the pain away, but his bio eye was slow to track their movements and reluctant to focus, and his cybernetic eye wasn't returning any data at all, so he could only guess at what they might be doing beyond what he could vaguely feel through the lingering haze in his brain.

Eventually, Christopher's curiosity grew too great to be contained, not even by the combination of his probably-drugged thought process and his desire to obey Aki, and he could not resist asking, "What happened?" It was good to know that his mouth still seemed to work just fine. He hoped that a little bit of talking counted as holding still enough for whatever Aki's purposes were.

"Julian blew the main support beam for the New York headquarters," Aki said. There was a bitter edge to her voice, almost as if that top hat wearing asshole destroying the building had been a personal insult to her, but she continued clicking away beyond his field of unfocused vision. It sounded like she was working one of those arcade-looking consoles she had used to build the car. "I was able to get us through the basement's interconnected spatial distortion pathways to a different location before the tower came down. We're at the Cape Town facilities now. However, your body was heavily damaged, so I'm making repairs before we do anything else."

Saying that he had been heavily damaged was probably an understatement, considering how much Christopher remembered that pipe through his chest hurting and the feeling of both his bio and cybernetic systems glitching and shutting down, going numb, going dark. He'd thought he was a goner for sure. He wondered if that other Aki unit he'd accidentally impaled all those weeks ago had been able to get back up and power through damage like that because she was a full robot without any human weaknesses like he had or if it was because Aki units were just tiny badasses like that.

"You make it sound so easy," Christopher said fondly, because he was pretty sure now that it was okay to talk. Aki would have told him otherwise by now if it weren't. Another unidentified blur of machinery whizzed past Christopher's head close enough for him to feel the breeze it generated as it went by, but whatever sedative that he was on had him too relaxed to feel the need to flinch away from it. He barely even blinked.

"Physically, it was very easy," Aki said, "though, at the time, I worried the fireman's carry I used on you might further aggravate your injuries. Emotionally, it was... challenging." The hitch in her voice was not robotic in the slightest.

Christopher wasn't exactly terrible at talking about feelings, not like some guys he knew were, but he suspected that he wouldn't be all that good at it right now either, not when he was flat on his back and barely managing to think with a half-fogged brain. He figured it would be better to change the subject until he was firing on all cylinders again and could hold Aki close and look her in the eyes. 

"I found Arthur poking around in the restricted labs and we fought," he said. "Turns out, when push comes to shove, he's not as much of a candyass as he usually acts, but I still could have taken him if his girlfriend hadn't interrupted." A traitorous part of Christopher's brain whispered that maybe it was a good thing the chick had distracted him enough to keep him from killing Arthur, but he didn't want to deal with those kinds of doubts right now or possibly ever. Fortunately, Aki provided a distraction of her own.

"Much of the damage to your body was incurred before your altercation with your former partner," Aki said harshly, and it was easy for Christopher to tell that he was not the one who she was angry at. Then, in a gentler tone, she continued, "I warned you those modifications were dangerous. Many of the changes Heart made at your request were in neither of our best interests."

"Yeah, about that...," Christopher began, only to pause as he debated how best to broach what was sure to become a touchy subject for both of them. After a few moments of listening to the clicking, beeping, and whirring machinery, he decided to just jump right in and get it over with, like tearing off a band-aid, because Aki seemed to appreciate bluntness, though she might not line the, ahem, physical bluntness she would find the next time she went looking to make use of her favorite part of him. "While I was fighting with Arthur, he tried to punch me in the dick, only it turned out that Heart had—"

"Already taken care of," Aki interrupted, sounding happier than he'd heard her since before their ill-fated attempt at disabling their proximity sensors. "It was one of the first things I corrected after stabilizing your vital functions." She clicked a final button behind him, and the machinery finished its whirring around him and withdrew. "You may move again, if you wish," she said. Then she sauntered over to him, leaned down, and stroked the side of his face with one hand while doing something to the data-port embedded near his eye with the other.

All of a sudden, the fog lifted from Christopher's brain, as did the lethargy from his body, and his vision snapped into instant focus in both eyes. He blinked in surprise and then smiled. Wow. That sure was easier than waiting for old-fashioned chemical anesthetic to wear off. He still ached faintly in places, but he felt pretty damn good, all things considered. He briefly considered lifting his head to check his cock and balls situation, but dismissed the thought for now because he still only had eyes for Aki. He did, however, give an experimental sideways shimmy with his hips, because he could do that while taking in the view of Aki's beautiful face. He was rewarded with both a smile from Aki and that certain shift of flesh he had been hoping for at crotch level. He heaved a sigh of relief. He wasn't quite ready to say that everything down there felt exactly the same as it used to, not until he had a chance or five to put it all through its paces, but at least they felt pretty good, and being there at all was a major improvement from his previous situation.

"You did great, baby," Christopher said, intending for those words to be just the lead up to a properly eloquent expression of thanks for saving his life, his manhood, and maybe his humanity all in one go, but Aki silenced him by gently placing the tip of a single finger across his lips.

"I told you that I would take care of you, Christopher," Aki said, smiling down at him, "and I always will." Then she leaned in closer and left a trail of kisses starting at his forehead and working her way down to his mouth. When she reached his lips, she lingered for a long while, taking her time to kiss him deeply and thoroughly, and yet she did not spend nearly long enough for Christopher's tastes, if only because the longer that he spent around her, the more that he was sure that he wanted nothing short of forever. When she broke the kiss and slowly, teasingly, pulled away, Christopher tried to follow her up, but was immediately stopped short by the restraints which still held him to the table.

"What?" he said despite not being entirely surprised by the situation.

"I can't just let you get up and go before I've tested that everything is properly functional," Aki said, tilting her head at a slight angle as her smile grew wider and more mischievous. "That would be irresponsible of me."

"Oh yeah?" Christopher said. He gave a quick pull against the restraints at his wrists, not hard enough to put either their strength or his own to the test, just to make the metal rattle in a small gesture of token protest. He wanted to grin right back at her, but he resisted, because that wasn't how this scenario was supposed to go. Aki could probably read how into it he was by monitoring the increase in his heart rate, and how his pupils dilated, and who knew what else, but playing along was both expected and part of the fun. And, he realized, it could help counterbalance the memories of those times when it hadn't been any fun at all, which would be good for both of them. "What kind of tests did you have in mind?"

"Exhaustive ones," Aki promised, placing a hand down near Christopher's knee and stroking it up along his inner thigh tantalizingly slowly.

Christopher did not bother trying to hold back his grin. "Yes, ma'am," he said and settled back against the table, eager to see whatever Aki had in store for him.

In the end, neither of them were disappointed with the other's performance.

\- ♥ -

Later, much _much_ later, after taking longer to enjoy themselves than was prudent in the given circumstances, Aki and Christopher exited through Heart's Joplin, MO, facility, not because either of them had any specific destination in mind at that point, but because they wanted to get away from Cape Town before anyone noticed Aki's use of the lab facilities and looking to clean up loose ends, and other than Los Angeles and New York, which were no longer viable options for them, the wall map showed Joplin as the most expedient route out with the lowest risk of capture. All it took was a short walk down a hallway which to human eyes would have looked like any other basement hallway but passed through one of the lesser spatial connection nodes piercing and puckering the fabric of reality to join all of Heart's corporate locations, and suddenly they were on the other side of the world again. From there, it was a simple matter of climbing a flight of stairs, and then they were standing with a blank brick wall at their backs, at the edge of a mostly empty parking lot under open sky. They had not even needed to break or otherwise bypass any locks. The doors had been standing open.

Aki no longer had access to Heart's security network, but her GPS chip was still perfectly functional and told her that they were exactly where the map had said they would be.

"Woah," Christopher said, looking around. "I don't think that's ever going to stop being freaky but also kinda cool."

Aki gave no outward indication that she disagreed with him, but internally she was… (what was the word?)... uneasy (yes, that was the one, and it was yet another new emotion to learn to process) with their situation, so she settled for telling him, "We should keep moving." Christopher might not have known enough about Heart architecture to question the ease of their escape, but Aki knew that it ordinarily would not have been so short a journey, even with the interconnected basements. The route had rearranged itself to make this the most expedient choice. The humans who built and used Heart's facilities believed that the occasional shifts and changes in the connections were random and/or accidental. Aki knew such assumptions were false, but she had never been able to discern a pattern or motive, and she disliked not being able to understand the motives of those who sought to control her, human or otherwise.

"We could keep going west," Christopher suggested after what was probably a pause to consult his own GPS. "There's not much left of L.A., but we could try Phoenix or Vegas." It came out as more of a question than a statement.

"No," Aki said. She knew that west was the wrong direction, but she could not determine the reason why. She scanned their surroundings and ran all data she had on the situation through as many different logic algorithms as she could think of, but none of the results provided a satisfactory explanation for her inexplicable certainty. "We need to go east. Or, at least, I need to go east." Something was pulling her east, toward the Scar. For whose benefit, she had no way of knowing, but both Heart's facilities and her own body were constructed from materials harvested from the Scar, and she found herself unable to resist the call, proving once again that she would probably never be as human as she thought Christopher deserved. "You do not need to accompany me if you don't want to, Christopher," she said.

"Of course I do," he said, and that sparked a tiny bit of pleasure in Aki but was not enough to reassure her that her logic was sound.

There were only five cars in the parking lot. Four of them had obviously been abandoned there long ago. Their paint was faded and peeling. Their windows were broken. Their tires were flat and rotting apart in the sun. The fifth car, which was parked near the eastern gate with its keys still in the ignition and its nose toward the open road, was the custom built silver Jag with the blood engine that Aki had put together for their original escape attempt and that they has left behind in Los Angeles. Seeing it here should have been a surprise, but it wasn't. Even Christopher merely stared at the vehicle for a moment once he recognized it, pursing his lips unhappily before opening the door sliding into the passenger seat without comment.

Aki drove east. After about fifteen miles her GPS chip started cutting in and out before losing signal altogether a few miles later, and Christopher confirmed that his had done the same, but Aki did not need GPS now, not when something near the Scar was pulling at her like a magnetic field on a compass needle. Even as the sky and everything around them went white and the road surface disappeared beneath blowing sand, leaving her basically driving blind for miles, Aki knew the way to go despite not knowing the destination.

Then, in the space between one of Christopher's breaths and the next, the sandstorm cleared, revealing the edge of the Scar.

Aki let the Jag roll to a stop on the loose sand and then exited the car to survey their surroundings. She knew that Heart conducted surveys of the Scar on a regular basis, but they never wasted AKI units on a task where lesser robot models, clones, or humans who had outlived their usefulness would work just as well for their purposes. The data was kept on a secure server isolated from the company's main computer networks, and Aki had never previously thought to wonder what the results might have been. In person, the data pouring into her sensors was contradictory, to say the least. Within the parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that were visible to the average human eye, there only appeared to be a single small building all alone in a barren landscape bisected by an empty chasm. Along all other frequencies within Aki's sensory range, looking into the Scar was like watching an over-compressed recording of an electrical storm that had been turned upside-down and played in slow-motion. It was uncomfortable to look at and, to the parts of her consciousness that were still expanding beyond the recently removed constraints of her original programming, terrifying.

And yet, this place felt like... home? The small building, Tasty Dragon according to the sign across its front, should not have been familiar, but somehow it was.

Aki exited the vehicle and, with Christopher close on her heels, began walking towards whatever her future and possibly her past held in store for her.

\- ♥ -

Christopher looked around them.

The restaurant was not any more impressive on the inside than it was on the outside, and the weird visual glitches Christopher's cybernetic eye had been throwing while they were outside, making him feel like Aki had driven them into a bad 80s music video, had calmed down once they crossed the threshold. Or, at least, they had mostly calmed down. All the furniture and decorations looked a little too bright and somehow simultaneously too solid and not really there at all, even to his bio eye. And then there was the woman behind the counter near the door. At least, Christopher hoped it was a woman. His bio eye saw a little old Chinese woman whose semi-fake smile dropped into a look of pure shock as she turned to greet them, but his cybernetic eye saw a roughly human shaped hole out into the void of space with weird bright squirming interconnected filaments of _something_ where stars should have been.

"Aki, what--?"Christopher began, but at the sound of his voice, the Chinese woman (the eldritch void? the personification of the Scar itself given the semblance of human form?) jerked out of her apparent frozen surprise and came rushing around the end of the counter and then toward them with arms outstretched. Christopher tried to put himself between the old woman and Aki, but both of them sidestepped him in unison. Aki's inhuman strength was probably the only thing that kept the two women standing as the old woman slammed into her at full speed and wrapped her in a tight embrace. Christopher felt a moment of terror that this thing was going to push Aki into itself and out into space or whatever it was that he was seeing on the other side of that hole and then collapse and vanish before he got the chance to follow after her.

Instead, the void part seemed to recede to a greater distance and fade to almost nothing, leaving behind something which even Christopher's cybernetic eye agreed was 99% little old Chinese woman, who was currently holding onto Aki for dear life and sobbing, "Oh, Aki, my dear Aki, have you really come back to me?" into her wind-tousled hair.

Aki simply stood there without moving for a moment. Then she raised her arms from her sides and tentatively returned the embrace. It looked a little awkward at first, but then she settled into it like she was relaxing into something familiar.

Christopher inched his way around the two of them, going slowly just in case sudden movements might provoke a less friendly reaction out whoever or whatever this was. When he got a position where he could see Aki's face again, he beheld a look of happy but semi-bemused wonder, the same look she got whenever he told her that he loved her. Before he could fall too far into a building sense of jealousy, Aki looked up and met his eyes.

"Christopher," she said, "you told me once that you thought Heart might have erased any old memories I might have had and replaced them with new ones." She paused and then said, "I believe you were correct. This feels... right."

Christopher glanced between the two women (the elder of whom could still be heard muttering things like, "Oh, my Aki!"), and as he began noting the faint similarities between the two which had nothing to do with their respective levels of inhumanity, the full implications of her words dawned on him. "Aki," he exclaimed in the fearful happy betrayal known to a certain lucky subset of men throughout all of history, "baby, did you just bring me to meet _your mom_ without even warning me first?!?"

The corner of Aki's small crooked smile inched a little higher on her face. "Apparently I did," she said, and reached out with one hand to pull him into the hug.

♥ **The End** ♥


End file.
